


Cassette 1, Side A: You Are Safe/Cassette 1, Side B: The Trees Keep Watch

by mintpearlvoice



Category: Within the Wires (Podcast)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, F/F, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-16 23:32:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9294503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintpearlvoice/pseuds/mintpearlvoice
Summary: tfw you can't physically be there for your traumatized girlfriend so you make her tapes(post-canon)





	

 

The fact is that I find my job fulfilling. I enjoy restoring paintings, pouring over the brushstrokes, analyzing technique and materials.

A contrasting fact: every moment that I spend restoring paintings is, through the natural impossibility of inhabiting two places at once, a moment that I am not spending restoring you. I am not holding you, or petting the inconceivably soft fuzz that has grown upon your closely shaved head.

This will naturally lead to a certain amount of concern in regards to your condition. In regards to what state you may be in upon my return.

Cassette 1, Side A: you are safe.

Listen, and remember. The first item of importance- you are not in the Institute. This is not an exercise in the Extensive Studies Laboratory, although I have heard some of their virtual reality simulations can be slightly convincing.

The cottage by the sea is a real place. You inhabit this place. You inhabit your body, which is healing and beautiful and in no immediate danger.

Catalogue the sensations you are now experiencing in your body, which is perfect beyond measure. Are you touching a window, the glass slightly warm from sunlight? Are you touching a blanket, crocheted unevenly from yarn of multiple textures?

What are you touching? This texture, even with recent scientific advancements, is not a facet of virtual reality. Consider the method of looking at a home as an extension of its inhabitants. Consider the warmth or the softness as an extension of the person you love keeping you safe.

Feel the presence of your clothes on your skin. These clothes have recently been washed in lavender-scented laundry detergent, a further contrast from the Institute.

You are incontrovertibly safe.

Are you breathing?

If you are listening to this tape, there is a significant possibility that you are not breathing properly. In-out. In-out. This is a form of breathing often used by people who expect they will have to run for their lives, or that someone will break down the door and shove them roughly to the ground.

Your brain needs oxygen in order to think clearly.

Are you thinking clearly?

Listen to the sea outside your window. It moves slowly, in the undisturbed pattern of centuries. In, long and unchanging. Out, taking as much time as it needs. Listen to the sea. Listen to your breathing. In two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight, hold-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight. And out.

Magnificent.

We will move along to a series of requests. Tasks that you might set for yourself in order to aid your recovery. Some of these may strike you as Hester being slightly overprotective. Or as frightening. Or as impossible.

Know that they are merely suggestions; that I trust you, and that your body is fully your own.

Have you eaten today?

I have read reports of the Intensive Studies Laboratory. Patients were often… starved, to test their body responses to insufficient caloric consumption- to see how this might adjust their reaction times, or their reflexes. Or given food that was visibly expired, or invisibly drugged.

Your body is no longer a piece of equipment possessing a number. Your body is special because you are special. There will be no consequences for consuming food.

At the time of listening to this tape, there will be food in the fridge or left out on the table. These supplies may include a pear tart with cinnamon, a chicken stir-fry with several sauces and seasonally varied vegetables, and, statistically, curry.

If you eat a few bites, you may find it easier to think clearly; your heart rate may decrease to comfortable levels, and pain you are experiencing may also diminish.

Listen to the ocean. Remember to breathe.

Let’s talk about running. Heel-toe, heel-toe. Et cetera. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, although there has been no sound to disturb me. I go to my window and see you running along the beach in pajamas and sneakers. As if you are chasing something. As if you are being chased. You do not remember this afterwards, but I am aware that you remember running while you are awake. Even if you cannot explain why.

There are many people who have a continued interest in your well-being. There are many people who are dissatisfied with the Institute, with the society, and especially with the Extensive Studies Laboratory.

I am not the only person who is actively working to keep you safe.

Give yourself permission to sit in the armchair by the window that looks out onto the front porch. To finish reading your recently purchased paperback copy of Heralds of Valdemar. In the long term, it will be better for your recovery to not diminish your body, to not drain resources that you will have difficulty replenishing.

In more than one sense, you are not a number.

Listen to the sea. Breathe.

This is the tape labeled "if you are having a very bad day" not to be confused with an off day, a less than ideal day, or a day that started out good but you now find yourself in need of reassurance.

I have made tapes for these.

I am glad that, whatever strange and terrible places the digressions of your mind have trapped you in, that you still have the strength of will and awareness to listen to my voice. I am glad that my voice can be the silver rope you climb to find your way out.

The most heartening factor in all of this is your survival. The fact that you manage to live, to grow slowly stronger, is in itself a complete act of rebellion.

Like anything worthwhile, rebellion occurs unevenly. It may even be, at times, difficult.

Imagine me holding you. Imagine yourself being held. Being safe. 

Think of yourself as a caterpillar. Your mind is shifting and expanding. Your body is shifting and expanding.

Imagine yourself as a caterpillar, secure to grow and change within the softness of your cocoon.

Are you breathing? I hope you are remembering to breathe.

 

The body, after being subjected to a prolonged period of starvation, generally finds it difficult to regulate temperature. You may, while listening to this tape, feel cold. You may not know that you feel cold. This oversight may be due to disassociation or anxiety.

Step over the threshold of your mind and into your body. Take a moment to figure out if you are cold.

 

A bad day may be preceded by a less than ideal night; a night in which one finds it difficult to sleep due to memories of being ambushed while sleeping, waking to find out that one's body is no longer one's own, or the fear that reality is in itself the dream.

Sleeping is not, in itself, hazardous. When not in hazardous circumstances, it is advisable to sleep at least eight hours within a twenty-four hour period.

Give yourself permission to lie down in the armchair with its view of the ocean, or on the sofa next to the armchair, by the table with the half-assembled puzzle. Give yourself permission, if it is that sort of a day, to walk barefoot down the hallway, feeling the carpet under your feet, and fall onto my bed.

Are you reclining comfortably?

Let us continue.

 

Remember being in a forest. You may not remember being in this particular forest. In that case, imagine a forest, majestic and thriving. A place where the earth is in love with itself. There is moss under your body, like velvet. You could relax every muscle in your body- your jaw, your shoulders, the way you hold your breath without thinking, as if you are about to be chased. You could let go of everything, and the ground would hold you up.

Let the ground hold you, as someone who loves you might hold you, absorbing the solid weight of your body.

Sunlight filters through the leaves, oak and ash and maple. Do you remember playing between these trees, wielding a fallen twig like a magic wand or climbing a low branch with a book under your arm?

The trees remember you. They would not wish to forget you. You are not the sort of person one would wish to forget.

The trees reach deep into the cool earth. They drink in gold morning light. Think about the quiet trees, and how they breathe on the timetable of years. Think about the smell of a forest after rain.

The trees are tall and sturdy. Pillars reaching all the way to the sky. You could not even fit your arms around one. Not as a child, not even now.

Yes, they reflect among themselves. This is our sapling. Lightning-split and scorched but thriving, the way plants put out new growth after a fire. With roots falling so deeply and easily into the earth.

The trees guard you because they love you. Because you are loveable; because you are loved.

I'm going to play some music now so you can think about trees.

 

(The tape ends at this point, mainly because the listener has fallen asleep.)


End file.
